The Sin of Ignorance

In his article The Contemporary Scandal, Mark Noll sets forward the idea that since the early nineteenth century, the Evangelical church has abandoned and neglected the intellectual tradition that for centuries defined growth and community involvement within the Christian Church. According to Noll, this is a grievous sin.

I must say I agree with Noll quite adamantly on the topic. I believe that the anti-intellectualism cultivated in the evangelical mind since the Great Awakenings of the nineteenth century is a negligence of studying God’s Truth and a sin on the part of the Christian Church. However, I also believe that on the part of the individual, intellectual pursuits should be defined by the skills and opportunity of that individual.

Here at JBU, we hear the phrase ‘All Truth is God’s Truth’ quite a bit. This includes truth in theology, art, music, language, science, politics, economics, engineering, mathematics, and the list goes on. However, once we step into our churches on Sunday morning, whether they be Presbyterian, Baptist, Episcopal or the ever-growing Non-Denominational, we are often met with a sharp contrast: In church, the focus is missions. Missions, missions, missionaries, and mission work. Spread the word, save lives, share the gospel. Oh, you want to teach the arts and sciences from a Christian worldview? Oh, well, I suppose that’s okay too. But you should still contribute to missions.

It is this dichotomy, holistic intellectual thinking in Christian schools and limited evangelical understanding in the church, that highlights one of the biggest, most glaring deficiencies in modern American churches.

I think one of the main consequences of this sin in the Church is the loss of influence in the world. For centuries, dozens of intellectually active Christians defined the scientific, artistic, and intellectual world. Isaac Newton, Johann Sebastian Bach, Blaise Pascal; all were Christian thinkers who revolutionized their study and profession for all of history to see. They were no less Christian because they were intellectuals and no less intellectual because they were Christian. Contrary to the commonly accepted faith/knowledge dichotomy, both their Christian lives and their intellectual lives were enhanced and complimented by each other. However, this complimentary, holistic lifestyle embraced by the Christian fathers of modern science and art has been rejected by the modern American church and the results have been devastating.

Not only do Christians tolerate if not condone ignorance among fellow Christians, but they have completely lost their intellectual influence in modern culture. Science has been overtaken by Naturalists, the arts by Existentialists, the humanities by the Humanists. Amid their intellectual negligence, Christians have been elbowed out of avenues that once belonged to them –and rightly so, because those avenues were created by God and are most fully lived out within the Christian faith in Him. However, thanks to the anti-intellectual attitude adopted by the modern Christian church, these avenues have been lost to the detriment of the American culture, the Christian Church’s influence, and ultimately the effectiveness of the very missions that the Evangelicals so ruthlessly endorse.

Although we reside in a undeniably intellectual world, Christians have chosen to ignore if not oppose intellectual pursuits, refusing to fight one of the largest, blaringly obvious battlefields of faith. Instead of reclaiming the intellectual legacy left by their Renaissance forefathers, Christians have opposed intellectual pursuits, denied God’s holistic Truth and ultimately neglected one of the greatest ‘evangelical’ or Christians opportunities open to believers in the modern era.

I think it is definitely legitimate to say that this anti-intellectualism, as Noll proposes, is a sin on the part of the Christian church, and even more legitimately, that it needs to change.

Final thoughts:

 Does this ‘anti-intellectualism is sin’ train of thought include individuals, or just collective groups of Christians?

How to we regain the intellectualism that we’ve lost? Do we have to compromise our beliefs to go into the intellectual world?